I've Been Vacuuming This Carpet for Twelve Years
by Lupusoctura
Summary: "Just keep vacuuming...just keep vacuuming…." That's all I know how to say anymore. The words feel dead and flat on my tongue, like a chewed popsicle stick, but I am afraid of flavor, afraid of feeling anything ever again. Not after...what HE did to me. Not after he seeped into the cracks in my skin and broke me from the inside. (Rated T for swearing and suggestive content.)
1. Prologue: I May Not Be Able to Talk, But

**Prologue: I May Not Be Able to Talk, But...**

"Just keep vacuuming...just keep vacuuming…."

That's all I know how to say anymore.

The words feel dead and flat on my tongue, like a chewed popsicle stick, but I am afraid of flavor, afraid of feeling anything _ever_ again. Not after...what _he_ did to me. Not after he took my mind and unplugged the wires that connect it with the rest of my body.

Not after he seeped into the cracks in my skin and broke me from the inside.

You would assume it's my husband I'm referring to; who hasn't heard _that_ story before, the story of the wife breaking free of the abusive husband, the story of how that abusive husband put said wife through the most traumatic moments of her life. No, no, that's far from it, that's not who _he_ is...it's my...it's my... _son…?_

No, I will _never_ call him that. Never again.

No, it's the little demon baby that chewed a hole into my life: Gideon Gleeful.

I have _no_ obligation to call him my son anymore, to squish his pudgy cheeks like I actually care if he's still alive. He has _no_ right to call me his mother, _no_ right to believe that I carried his demented body around in me for nine months, no right to believe that I actually had a hand in creating the black hole that is eating at his brain. I could never imagine something so evil, so twisted, mooching off of my own genes, my own DNA. The thought is _disgusting_ , even though it's true, we are related. His first word was "Mama," and that was what he used to call me, and that was when he was an angel, when I actually thought his baby fat was cute and I thought that taking care of him would turn out to be this heart-changing experience that would be worthy of a John Green novel.

That lasted for three months.

Ever since he stumbled upon Journal #2, when he was only three months and seven days old, it's been "Mother," in that disgusted tone of his, like he has something caught in his fat little throat. The fat little throat that I would now be _happy_ to strangle.

In case you missed something, I want to be clear: I am _not_ his mother.

I am not "Mrs. Gleeful," as everyone calls me. In fact, I'm Burris (or Buddy) Gleeful's _sister,_ not goddamned _wife_. Whoever marries him, I pity severely. That man has no voice of his own, he is a speaker for Gideon's mind control...but I'm such a hypocrite, aren't I? I haven't said anything but 'Just keep vacuuming' for twelve years, twelve filled with Gideon's hairspray becoming my oxygen and never leaving the house. I don't even know if I can speak anymore.

Yeah, I have a name. It's a name I'd like to forget, but it's there; like that hideous birthmark or mole you never want anyone to see. I find names useless. I'm me, and you're you. Done with conversation. But of course I am the only human who feels this way, so I will introduce myself for your sake: my name is Danelle Obblene Gleeful, and this vacuum has been broken for six years, half as long as I've been stuck in this house, pretending to be married to my own brother and the mother to my power-hungry nephew.

Every time Burris is selling his broken cars and Gideon is off terrorizing children, I look in the mirror. Each time, I see another long streak of gray in my hair, marking another line that Gideon has played with, another time he has called me "Mother." Years ago, I could've yelled at him if I had wanted to. I could've tore every single white hair from that big head of his and stuff it in his mouth. But now, every thought like that has plummeted to the bottom of my stomach, become the bile that I throw up when the rest has run out. If I killed the kid, what would be fulfilled except my own, dirty wishes?

No, no, killing him won't fix anything. That won't fix the fact that my sister ran off with a man who created a portal to another dimension, that won't fix the fucking fact that I'm the only one who remembers that the man who owns the Mystery Shack isn't actually Stanford Pines, and the only one who remembers that Burris and I are related. Yeah, my brother actually thinks he's in love with me, he's tried to make a move on me, he was my first french-kiss. He doesn't know he's in a play, a puppet show that my sister tied the strings of and made the puppets for. If I ever see her again, if I ever see that damned Abrianna Gleeful again, I am going to shove her off the face of the earth and watch her bones break when she hits the bottom.

But now, and maybe forever, I am trapped in this this false reality where every step I take feels like I'm triggering tripwires, tripwires that will create more gray lines in my hair and more wrinkles in my skin. I'm married to my own brother, in love with a man who thinks I don't remember him, and not able to say anything about what I know of this town.

Oh, yes, I know _all_ the secrets of Gravity Falls.

I was the one who watched the author write the journals, I was the one who _bought_ him those journals, and I was the one who stood idly by while him and his cronies innocently began to scatter the pieces of our universe.

I have been vacuuming the same spot of this diamond-printed rug for years. I quickly figured out that no one cared if I moved, no one cared if I was still breathing; so I just stand here, hunching over this vacuum, in the same green smock that I haven't taken off in months, the same one I got married to my brother in. All I think about is how you don't feel things in your heart, but on top of your skin. Every day I relive my past, as I watch Gideon tromp around this town like he knows all the secrets, knows the depth of every face. Since I can't speak anymore, I listen. I listen to him rant about how he is willing to burn to the earth's core in order to get to the Mystery Shack, listen to him mutter the second journal aloud to himself. Pfft. He thinks he know all the secrets of this town? He's not even _close_.

Before this vacuum gets tired of vacuuming the carpet and starts to want to vacuum me or the gray lines in my hair start to spread to my body, I need to record these secrets and hide them somewhere. Maybe with the man I love, maybe with the rest of the journals that the cursed author wrote.

I won't be able to close my eyes if I know that no one will ever remember.


	2. Chapter One: Burris' First Day of School

**Yummy S: Oh, I can't tell you how much that means to me that you liked it! ;) Why would I write a novel when I could instead be writing things that you, a truly lovely person, can enjoy? Thank you sooooooo much for reading, and I hope to talk with you more!**

 **Invader Tia: My imagination, and the fact that this is fanfiction and none of it is canon, gave me the right. ;)**

 **ShadowClanWarrior: Thank you for giving this a chance, lovely reader! I hope you enjoy all that's to come! :D**

 **And thank you, really, really thank you, to all of the people that decided to give this story a peek! I couldn't keep going without you.**

* * *

 **Chapter One: Burris' First Day of School**

I've lived in Gravity Falls my entire life.

I said my first words here, got potty trained here, had my first kiss here. I've never been out of town, never been far enough away that someone had to miss me. That's because (and I would figure this out on the first day of Kindergarten) that Gravity Falls is a pretty interesting place. And by interesting? I mean its mysteries are as addictive as a drug: once you start solving them, thinking about them, you can't stop.

And Stanford Pines, even as early as five months old, was overdosing on it.

And no, I _don't_ mean the "Stanford Pines" who currently owns the Mystery Shack and makes a living by glueing random things onto other, equally random things. That's not Stan; that's _Alexander_ Pines, Stan Pines' older, cunning brother. Stanford Pines is an _entirely_ different person: younger, more inquisitive, and too curious for his own good; he was one of those kids that never grew out of their, "Ooh, what's this?" stage. Heck, for my sister's sake, I'd wish he'd listened to his older brother at least _once_. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't be thirsting for her blood like some creepy vampire.

My older brother, Burris, the one that I'm now married to, and my younger sister, Abrianna, the one that I am now despising ways to go back in time and kill, and I, were raised in a house that looked like it had grown out of the forest itself: single story, tape on various places on the left wall, and rusting gutters that you could see poking out of the ground for miles. By the time the last of us, Abrianna, was born, we were used to not being around anybody but each other and our parents; I think we all had the impression that nothing existed beyond the edge of the clearing of our house, where the pine trees rose up like the bars of a cage. Our lives were filled with giving each other wet willies, cowering by Mom and Dad's feet as they fought about how all we could afford to eat was canned meat, and pretending that we were running from monsters that hid in the walls.

That changed when Burris turned five years old.

A couple months after his birthday party, and three days before mine, Mom burst into our room at 7:00 A.M. and shoved him out of the bottom of the bunk bed that he and I shared. Still in her purple, butterfly-patterned robe that had been too small on her for years, she told him to take a shower, it's his first day of Kindergarten. Abrianna and I, she being in a handmade on the other side of the room and me being on the top bunk, were hardly awake, and Mom's and Burris' gruff whispers sounded like the narration one always hears in a dream. The Gleeful family was known for three things: an almost-red hair color, heavy builds, and the fact that we always went to bed early but woke up late.

When the sounds finally processed in our heads and turned into actual words three hours later, we both sat up in bed and looked at each other from across the room: as if we both had gotten one of those prophetic dreams that always happen in fantasy. Our hair, I remember, looked like crumpled rose petals stuck to the back of our heads as I slid out of my Little Mermaid covers and tiara-printed sheets and started to climb down the ladder feet first. When I reached the floor, I dragged my feet across the carpet as I made my way to her crib (a habit I had gotten into so I could wake Burris with an electric shock) and wrapped my hands around its wooden bars.

"Buwwy?" Abrianna had whispered in a slurred voice, pointing a bent finger at Burris' askew Buzz Lightyear covers. The funny thing about our childhood is that we had no idea what Disney was; Mom had just bought the blankets because they were on sale, she had a boy and a girl, and they kinda, sorta, maybe, matched the light yellow wallpaper room.

"No Buwwy," I had whispered back, and all that could be heard was the sound of Abrianna's Girls-Rule mobile tinkling softly above our heads.

The rest of that day was filled with sitting on the dirt road in front of our house and playing I-Spy, the sharp sediment creating imprints in our hands and the bottoms of our footie pajamas beginning to turn a dusty red from the color of the rocks as we waited for Burris to show up. To us, it seemed like Burris had finally been snatched by the monsters, because we didn't understand the meaning of the word 'school,' when we had asked Dad where Burris had gone. As a result, we spoke of school as one would speak of hell; which is ironic, because it actually _was_.

"Buwwy rot in school," I would grumble mercilessly, each time Abrianna had spotted what I had spied (which was always the mailbox) just to annoy her. Burris and I were never close; I didn't even know his favorite color or what he wanted to be when he grew up until we were both nineteen years old. But Abrianna _adored_ Burris, no matter how much he told her to ask Mom and Dad if she could sleep in _their_ room again, no matter how many times he locked her out of our room. So, because of her obligation to King Burris the Great, every time I said that, she thought I deserved a big handful of red dust thrown in my face.

"That mean, Danny," she would whine, while the corners of my eyes were burning, "Buwwy nice. Me turn. I spy little eye…."

We sat in the exact same place for eight hours straight; two pointy-chinned, pajama-clad toddlers, our stomachs attempting to eat us from the inside and the sun dripping onto our shoulders. Dad told me later, on _my_ first day of kindergarten, that he had watched us from the living room window that entire day, worried that we'd get bored of sitting still and start running down the road as fast as our little fat legs could carry us. But he said that we didn't move an inch. And that was a downright miracle, he said, because two-and-one year olds were supposed to have so much energy that they left a flammable trail of it wherever they went.

By the time that both of our muscles were basically rippling from all of the movement we had stored inside of us, it was 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon. Abrianna had fallen asleep on my shoulder out of boredom, so I had been digging worms out of the ground and creating a mighty dynasty, accompanied with my quiet narration. "No, king worm, what have you done! WORM KINGDOM DIE NOW…."

Then the Great Palace of Dirt began to tremble, and I had looked up and saw the drooping sun glinting off the front of Mom's silver truck as it climbed up the hill.

I dragged Abrianna out of the path of the car's tires, causing her to hit her head on the back of a sharp rock and jolt awake. She began to wail, throwing her little fists at me with all she had, but I was too distracted to grab them and hold them behind her back like I usually did when she wanted to play dirty. "C'mon, Abi!" I screeched, and I squeezed her wrist and pulled her along with me as the truck pulled to a stop in front of the porch; stepping on my great worm dynasty as I went.

"Buwwy?" Abrianna sniffled, rubbing the stream snot from her nose on the arm of her pajamas, and the passenger door clicked open. One of the perks about my family is that we got to sit in the front seat since we were born, since Mom's car was the only car we had; it only had three seating options: the driver's seat, shotgun, and the trailer. So, more often than not, when we had doctor's appointments or we were all going out to dinner, the three of us, Burris, Abrianna, and I, would strap a seatbelt across all three of us in the front seat while Dad would stretch out in the trailer and mom would get the driver's seat all to herself.

So the hours of waiting had paid off; Burris had survived this horrible place called "school," and now stood in front of us, holding a necklace made out of pinecones and his shirt covered in solidified hot glue. Abrianna let go of my hand, stepped up to him, and poked his stomach; perhaps to feel the familiar doughiness that it had, and still has, beneath her little fingers

She had looked back at me, tossing her arms around his neck. "Told you he didn't rot in school."

Later that night, when Mom was ladling canned meat onto our Hello Kitty paper-plates and pouring rice milk into our color-coded sippy cups, Abrianna and I begged Burris to tell us how it was, how he possibly survived the torture. He had denied telling us anything for three hours straight, because he had rather enjoyed us following him around the house like paparazzi and telling us that it was "classified." We didn't think he had the right to hog the secret of what was beyond the end of our dirt road for himself because we had spent all day worrying that his skeleton was being feasted on in one of the vents. We felt that he _had_ to tell us where he'd been all day; not just because we cared that he wasn't dead, but because all one-and-two year old children (and pretty much all ages after that) go completely bonkers when someone mentions a snippet something important and then says, "Nevermind."

"Burris Gleeful, cut that shit out and tell your sisters how school was," our mother had barked, the legs of her chair scratching against the wood floor as she set her heavy frame on its moth-eaten cushion. Her use of a curse word may seem very alarming to you, but that woman didn't believe in censoring the world from children. 'They were gonna find out anyway,' was her constant catchphrase, which was why I knew that Santa Claus wasn't real by the age of two months and how babies were made by the age of three.

Burris, his ego pushed to the ground by Mom's reprimand, had released his haughty shoulders and jabbed a fork at his lumpy meat. "Yes, momma," he muttered obediently, then tucked his pinecone necklace into his shirt, as if it was a twenty-dollar-bill that he had been caught sneaking out of Dad's wallet.

We didn't get much of what school was out of him that night, but we sure got a lot of what grand "seemingly impossible" shit he had accomplished. Abrianna may have a bigger share of the money in my brother's Will because of her constantly bowing to his throne, but at least I was able to recognize pretty quickly that he wasn't going to get very far without stumbling over his inflated head. "You learn stuff there," was the only statement to fully prepare us of what would come at age five; the rest was Burris, Burris, Burris, and oh, did I mention Burris? Pride was like sugar to my older brother.

One of the things he talked about was "Manly" Dan; a boy he had met on the playground. No, correction; that was one of the _only_ things he talked about. Mom thought it was adorable that Burris had made a new friend (and that's saying something, because she was not a woman who found many things adorable) but Abrianna and I felt absolutely betrayed. He may not have been our favorite person, but he was the only one in our monster-hunting adventure team who could actually hold a sword and he was the one who eavesdropped on Mom and Dad's conversations so he could report back. He was more of a parent to us than Mom or Dad was, and we didn't know that he was what was called a "brother," not a mother or a father, until we grew out of calling him "Buwwy."

We felt so betrayed, we didn't want him going to this place called "school" ever again.

"You no go back," Abrianna said, locking her arm in his between one of his "Manly" Dan rants and almost knocking over her bright pink sippy-cup.

Through a mouthful of canned meat, he pushed her arm away and responded, "I go back everyday."

"Ev-er-ee day?" I had asked in confusion, my fork making a muffled _clink_ as it landed on one of Hello Kitty's round, white ears. Again, another word I didn't know, but the one thing that grown-ups always look over is that even when toddlers don't know a word, they can usually sense their meanings; and to me, everyday sounded a lot like forever.

Dad, who had been quiet all meal, rested a hand on Burris's shoulder. "Everyday," he echoed, and twenty minutes later, Abrianna and I had been sent to our room for performing a scream so loud and high-pitched that our father would never hear out of his left eardrum the same again.


End file.
